The solidarity and determination of the Durham Teaching Assistants has been an inspiration to other workers throughout the North East and beyond. More than once they refused to accept a deal which would have meant a complete cave-in.

The solidarity against injustice and the self-organisation of the Durham Teaching Assistants was, as we wrote in July, an inspiration to other workers throughout the North East and beyond (see leftcom.org). Their refusal to allow 25% of their colleagues to be sacrificed for the sake of a sordid deal with Durham County Council has deservedly earned the TAs (or Lions of Durham as they were labelled) the admiration of many.

Here is a sarcastic piece from Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers’ Dreadnought paper in 1922, it was reprinted as follows in 1961 by the UK-based libertarian socialist group Solidarity in their Solidarity for Workers’ Power journal (vol.1, no. 8).

The labour movement has been unable to de-link itself from its archenemy: capital. As its structures bureaucratise, as its leaders become career unionists, as it opens investment companies and pays staff increasingly inequitable salaries, it increasingly mirrors the very thing it is fighting. If the South African Federation of Trade Unions is to meet its promise, it must be fundamentally different from the organisation it was born out of.

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